’80s music

All posts tagged ’80s music

She’s my favorite eclectic monstress, her work pitching from No Wave aggression to pop smoothness and back again. Her collaborators, ranging from the queenly Nona Hendryx to the sci-fi flecked Thomas Dolby, have also expanded her artistic reach, making Adele Bertei one of the most interesting figures in the ‘80s cultural landscape and beyond.

Not only has her art celebrated queer feministic contexts, but Little Lives, Big Love, the single from her unjustly underappreciated solo album on Chrysalis, also sent out a strong anti-apartheid message.

A mother’s quest for vengeance strikes at the heart of the much ridiculed Jaws: The Revenge. I, for one, have always taken this goofy showcase for the determined talents of Lorraine Gary as a fun, feminist uprising and Stacy Lattisaw’s song Nail it to the Wall, featured on the film’s soundtrack, definitely reflects the power of a woman at her fullest strength.

Lattisaw, who enjoyed a number of bouncy, beloved hits throughout the ‘80s, is still performing in a spiritualistic capacity and can be visited at www.stacylattisaw.org.

There were a number of ‘80s girl groups featuring actresses. The Pin-ups, Lisa London’s (The Naked Cage, Sudden Impact) group, had a minor hit with Just About a Dream. Big Trouble, fronted by Bobbie Eakes (The Bold and the Beautiful, All My Children), were produced by the legendary Giorgio Moroder and had a song featured on the Over The Top soundtrack.

American Girls, highlighted by the co-lead vocals of Hilary Shepard, was probably the most musically diverse of the three. With layered musicianship, their single album release on IRS Records was compared to The Go-Go’s, their label mates. But their songs, while pop, were actually a bit more complex than the fun New Wave stylings of their more famous counterparts. This can be evidenced in the harmonic structures of American Girl, which also found a place in celluloid-verse, being featured in the Anthony Michael Hall feature, Out of Bounds.

The striking Shepard, meanwhile, may be better known to genre fans for committing some aggressive antics in Scanner Cop, one of several sequels to David Cronenberg’s horror classic, Scanners. She also made notable appearances on the A Cup of Time episode of Friday the 13th, the Series and Anthony Perkin’s lone directing credit, the horror-comedy Lucky Stiff.